28
THE NEW YORKER, JUNE 24, 2013
1
DID YOU HEAR THAT?
BROOD DUDE
Yes, the cicadas are here, or somewhere,
anyway. This would be Brood II of
the periodical seventeen-year cicada
Magicicada septendecim, last seen on the
Mid-Atlantic Coast in 1996. It's tempt-
ing to say that the din of anticipatory/cel-
ebratory/cicadapocalyptic news coverage
has been as noisy as that of the cicadas
themselves, but the bugs, once they get
going, are really loud. No hype can com-
pete. We might as well play along.
Their most persistent and tuneful ac-
companist is the "interspecies musician"
David Rothenberg, a professor of philos-
ophy and music at the New Jersey Insti-
tute of Technology. Over the years,
Rothenberg, a jazz player and composer,
has studied, collected, and played along
with the sounds and songs of whales and
birds. Out of this has come music that is,
in every sense, totally wild. The shrieks,
bleats, and moans of his clarinet and sax-
ophone forge a notional call-and-re-
sponse with the beasts of air and sea.
Seven years ago, Rothenberg took up
bugs, under the premise that insects were
the world's original musicians---that the
primordial thrumming of crickets and ci-
cadas was a kind of Cro-Magnon Juil-
liard. During the thirteen-year emergence
of Brood XIX, two years ago, he impro-
vised on a soprano sax with some cicadas
to her own stint as governor, which
began in 1994. Soon James Florio, Whit-
man's predecessor, arrived. "Tell me
what I'm doing here," he said. Whitman
laughed, and then noticed Thomas
Kean---Byrne's successor and Florio's
predecessor---approaching. "There's
Tom," she said, and waved. Byrne
clapped. More handshakes.
"So," Kean said. "We're here. Why?"
Lacking the attachés of sitting execu-
tives, the best answer they could come up
with was that they'd been invited by By-
rne's wife, Ruthi, a marketing and pub-
lic-relations executive, who was greeting
guests---a "Who's Who" of the Garden
State, as she later put it---in a banquet
room down the hall.
Florio to Byrne: "Brendan, the first
time I met you, you were wearing that
suit. It was 1973."
Byrne to Kean: "How many green ties
do you have?"
Kean to Byrne: "Only your wife could
have gotten us here. Only Ruthi."
A man named John Mooney, the
founding editor of an online news service
called NJ Spotlight, introduced himself
as the moderator of a discussion that
would soon follow in the banquet room,
and mentioned that he was hoping to
get each of them to say something com-
plimentary, on the dais, about another
governor.
"Are we going to have an opportunity
to make a statement about something we
care about?" Byrne asked. Mooney reas-
sured him that they would. "Just the
elected governors," Byrne went on, allud-
ing to interim governors like Richard
Codey and Donald DiFrancesco, who
served briefly in the wakes of the resigna-
tions of James McGreevey ("I am a gay
American") and Whitman (to run the
Environmental Protection Agency).
"So we can ignore the unelected
ones?" Whitman asked.
"Somehow the elected governors have
a gut feeling that the unelected gover-
nors---" Byrne began.
"We're not going to go there,"
Mooney interrupted, and added that he
was planning to ask the governors about
the current governor, Chris Christie,
who had recently elevated the job to a
position of greater national prominence.
Might they have any advice for---or
comments against---him, in a hypothet-
ical Presidential campaign?
"There was a governor of Rhode Is-
land, one time, by the name of Phil Noel,
and he was one of the cleverest men I
ever knew," Byrne said. "He would take
a question, and he would say, 'That's the
question, but that's not the issue!' "
More laughter. They were waiting for
McGreevey. Jon Corzine, the last of the
living ex-governors, declined his invita-
tion, though nobody seemed to mourn
his absence. ("I'm watching my words,"
Ruthi Byrne said afterward. "He proba-
bly has other things on his mind.") Small
talk continued, with the participants
pairing off along party lines. The Repub-
licans, Whitman and Kean, discussed
golf and horses, while the Democrats
talked boxing. (Byrne to Florio: "When
was the last time you actually fought a
fight?" Florio: "Twenty years old, in the
Navy, in Alaska.") John Schreiber, the
C.E.O. of the Performing Arts Center,
stopped by to greet the governors.
"You're looking spiffy," Byrne said, ad-
miring Schreiber's bow tie.
"Thank you so much for coming,"
Schreiber said.
"We're a little perplexed as to what
we're doing here," Florio said.
Schreiber explained that he'd been
trying to expand the center's cultural
offerings, and cited, as recent examples, an
eightieth-birthday celebration that he'd
held for Philip Roth, and a screening of
the movie "Lincoln" for students from
twenty-six schools around the city. Years
ago, Schreiber had organized a Presidents'
Summit for America's Future, hosted by
Colin Powell, in Philadelphia, and featur-
ing Presidents Ford, Carter, Bush, and
Clinton. "This was the closest thing I
could think of to that," he said.
"We're a big step down the ladder,"
Whitman said.
"Very seldom do you get a gaggle of
governors," Kean said.
Byrne began applauding, as Mc-
Greevey finally appeared. "What's the
worst thing you can say about your pre-
decessor?" Byrne asked the new arrival.
"I don't think he's going to ask that,"
Whitman said, eying Mooney.
McGreevey finished his greetings and
looked around. "I guess this is the Ruthi
Byrne bat mitzvah," he said.
Noon was approaching. "What time
do we eat?" Byrne asked. "Can we force
ourselves on these people?"
---Ben McGrath
David Rothenberg